17:12, Today: Horatio Aubrey rolled 6 using 2d6+1 with rolls of 2,3.  remote ops.
OOC I am fair sure I wrecked the drone.

Going up to Vonons chair
"So you not only managed to hit a tiny body floating in the system but also managed to hit it just hard enough to get it stuck somehow but keep it mostly intact?
Do you know the game revaka? You would be really good at it.

Catching a glimpse of the body on one of the camera feed on the bridge
"A pity that it is stuck though. Otherwise we could just leave it floating here."

In reply to Kheaiftouaw (msg # 44):

     Vonon regains his composure after a few gulps of air, then tries--and fails due to giggles--to glare at Khea.

     "Yes ^*hic* I'm just so good at ^*hee* at hitting things with a starship ^*snort* that I was able to ^*hee* able to compel Sharik to plot a Jump Course that would ^*hic* would have us drop out of Jump at ^*hee-hee* at exactly the precise moment to smack into a ^*ahem* into a body in orbit around a planet.  Yeah, I'm that good.  Sure."

     Vonon gets up from his seat and heads forward, towards the viewport.

     "C'mon," Vonon says to Khea, as he walks past her, "Let's go look at the new hood ornament--or, do you think we should claim him as our first Passenger?"

     Vonon walks up to the forward viewport, as close as he can get, stopping at a spot under the corpse stuck to the transparent metal.  Looking up at it, he tries to see if he can even determine what Race it is...was.

As the Longshot departed the station Reese adjusted himself back into his shipboard routines. A passionate student, he was happy to join Sir Walter's lectures to improve his knowledge of Brokerage, and in the rest of his free time worked on advancing his programming in the hopes that he might be useful in other shipboard operations as well as potentially helping Veronica find the glitch in her systems.

Reese made a point of getting to know the crew and, taking his duties as ship's medic seriously made an attempt to give each of them a check up; preventative care is crucial in a closed environment.

When the Longshot dropped out of jump space Reese was in the medbay as a matter of course, prepared to treat any unexpected injuries that may occur due to equipment malfunction, unexpected encounters or just plain tripping on the way to the fresher.

~Good grief!~ Reese thinks as he breaks open a trauma kit and sticks it to a tool tray near the primary operating table. Keying the controls of the primary autodoc Reese selects "Vacuum Exposure" from the menu and opens the portal, stepping half into the hall to watch the elevator. For a moment he considered grabbing the kit and heading to the launch bay to accompany the operation, thinking if there's a chance of survival every second would count, but then the comm barked again..



Reese can hear the Captain's gutteral laughter echoing from the bridge down the hall.

With a partial eye-roll at the Captain's sense of humor, Reese steps back to the autodoc and selects "Thaw" and "Autopsy" from the menu before keying the comms to connect with Drone Operations. "Where do I need to be Horatio?" he says as he mentally plots his jog to each of the airlocks..

OOC: Reese studying skills Broker 1.1 and Electronics - Computers 2.1

Inderpal suppressed a giggle at the comment about the 'sex doll' and then sent her message.

Invermory Control, this is Longshot. We haveve just jumped into the system and have encountered a dead body floating in our vicinity. We will be bringing them onboard to conduct an autopsy and will send you the results.

She leaned back and looked at the frozen corpse.

I hope you weren't murdered.
This message was last edited by the player at 09:59, Sat 20 July 2019.

"Veronica, what are the odds that our vessel would hit a dead body in space right after we came out of jump?" Sir Walter muttered as they made their way to the mining drone bay. "I am guessing 1.25 x 10^18 to 1"
This message was last edited by the player at 00:59, Tue 16 July 2019.

"Suit yourself, but first we nearly hit a pyramid floating in deep space and now a single body in a solar system.

So why are we bothering with it anyway?"

In reply to Kheaiftouaw (msg # 49):

     Walking towards the forward end of the Bridge, Vonon invites Khea to join him as he goes to a place underneath where the corpse is stuck to the forward viewport.

     As they are walking forward, Khea says to Vonon,


     Stopping under the body, Vonon looks up, attempting to identify the species of the corpse as he considers an answer to Khea's question.

     "Well...two reasons...I guess." Vonon says with a philosophical tone--still looking up at the body, "The first is simple curiosity--no!  Not simple curiosity!  Consider--even allowing that this ship would drop out of Jump along a vector pointing back towards Cassandra, which covers half of the hemispherical volume of space on this side of the planet, encompassing a stunningly massive volume of space where we could have dropped out at any point.  Yet we dropped out, literally, on top of this body--it struck us within seconds of our emergence.  That is a phenomena I just have to know more about!"

     "As for the second reason we are bothering with this body..." Vonon lowers his head and turns a stern gaze over to Khea, "For my entire adult life, up until this last year, I was a Space Patrolman.  I like to think I was a good Patrolman--I was most definitely not a bad Patrolman.  And that..."

     Vonon forcefully raises a pointing finger upwards, towards the body stuck to the viewscreen.

     "That is a dead body floating in space--without a space suit!  Now, there are a few, legitimate reasons that could explain a body floating in space without a suit, I'll grant you, but there are far too many cruel, vicious and illegal causes for a body to be found in such a condition, to just assume this was some simple accident.  No decent Patrolman would."

     Vonon lowers his arm with it's pointing finger, and shrugs,

     "Of course, I'm not an active Patrolman, anymore.  So we'll turn this whole thing over to local authorities, our responsibility will be over.  However, still a Patrolman or not, I know the procedures--and if we called the local authorities now, we'd find ourselves in lockdown while local Patrolmen investigated whether we had anything to do with this death, or not.  And despite the astronomical odds against it--what if this is some kind of set-up against us?  We need more information, before we get the locals involved."

     Vonon turns from Khea to look back over the handful of Crew sitting on the Bridge,

     "Everyone got that?  Until and unless Orbit Control or some other local authority from Invermory comms and asks us what's going on out here, we don't broadcast that we've hit this body in space.  We'll report it to the authorities at the starport, after we land--that'll give Reese and the autodoc a chance to try and figure out what happened to this poor sap."
This message was last edited by the player at 01:13, Sat 20 July 2019.

"Take over Marcus, I'm going to go see what the fuss is about."

Marcus gives Sylvester a passing glance as the other heads out of the engine room. He had heard chatter on the comm, and the ship broadcast from the captain, about them hitting something, but as long as it didn't impact his engines, he figured others could handle it. Besides, too many people try to put themselves in the middle of the action, when that only crowds things up, and Marcus preferred less crowded spaces.

Sylvester goes to the doorway to the bridge to see what he can see, trying to make out what the fuss is. After about five minutes of looking and listening and trying to follow along, he sees the body on the view port opening!

He scampers back to engineering to tell Marcus, "we seem to have hit a pedestrian in deep space! He appears stuck to the view port! They're working on recovery I think. I wonder what the space port will have to say." he says with a smile!

In reply to Sylvester Jinx (msg # 53):

OOC:  Crap! Crap! Crap!  Ignore the last part of my last post--go check Travellers Aid Society, Three for how I screwed up this time!
This message was last edited by the player at 00:23, Sat 20 July 2019.

Inderpal gulped and then raised her hand, turning to Vonon.

"Mr. Ronkunu, may I just say that I really like what you have done with your hair. If you could give me the name of your stylist, I would greatly appreciate it.

I would also like to say that you are a wonderful person and I hope that you will take what is going on in the proper consideration."

She gulped again.

"I've, er, already sent a text message to Orbital Control. Sharik told me. Please don't kill her, she is really rather beautiful."

Those on the bridge that are moving a bit closer to the viewport to examine the body more closely can see that it is a human male, he's not wearing a vacc-suit or any other type of protection other than normal clothes, and he appears to be clutching a book to his chest.

If you had to guess, you'd say his frozen expression was one of determination mixed with satisfaction.

There are no external cameras that show anything that close to the ship, but at least one of you will notice he's wearing space boots.


There was never any reason to slow down or come to a full stop even if the ship could have done that, but 'braking' via the grav thrusters is part of the vector... since you (presumably) want to slow down as you approach the planet.

"Very well, sir," Veronika replies to Walter. "I shall assist in bringing the body in safely and transporting it to the ship's medical facility."

"As for your estimate, I believe it is a bit high. There are only a few acceptable vectors approaching every planet, the variances on those are reasonably narrow, and any planet that has been inhabited by sentient beings capable of space travel have deposited a great amount of space debris in orbit."

"I estimate that the odds are unusual but not improbable. However, if you take into account the specific designation of a body, frozen or otherwise, the odds do increase significantly."

With that, she heads aft to the medical bay and retrieves a grav stretcher, then takes the elevator down to the lower deck.
This message was last edited by the player at 19:47, Sat 20 July 2019.

"We shall see but I was also factoring the odds that "this" particular ship, having just came out of jump, would literally run into a body. I have heard that it is more liley to happen to a military vessel during battle. Lets see what we got. I doubt it's going to ask for permission to come aboard..." Sir Walter said.

In reply to Inderpal Kumar (msg # 55):

     Vonon's head and shoulders slump, and he places his right hand over his eyes in a very Human expression of resigned acceptance of fate.  His tail, however, instinctively sticks out straight behind him, parallel with the floor, where it won't interfere with his legs should he need to run...

     After a few moments of silently shaking his head back and forth, in a faint, very small voice, Vonon finally asks, "Why...?"

     Vonon raises his head to glare over at Indy, reaching out with the hand that had been covering his eyes, for emphasis,

     "Why would you go and say anything to Orbital Control by sending them ... sending a..."

     Vonon suddenly stops speaking, and his glare turns into a puzzled frown, as he looks aside--and a little upwards--to Khea, at his side,

     "Wait, did she say she sent Orbital Control a text message?" Vonon asks Khea in a stunned tone--then, without waiting for an answer from the Aslan woman, Vonon turns back to Indy.

     "Did you say you sent Orbital Control a text message?  A text message?!  Really?!!"

"Yes, I sent them a text message. We're too far out for real-time voice communications."

She looked at him.

"I decided that this wasn't an urgent situation. We don't need them here right now, sir."

"Seems like dumping the body isn't an option anymore.
Did we jump right into a debris field? There might be some valuable salvage there to compensate for out effort.

Khea walks a few steps towards the main screen to look at the body closer.
"Or the clan of this guy might compensate us. Looking at Vonon she adds "Can you recognize which clan he belonged to?"

Sharik’s voice was kept even, even as she had continued to correct Vonon every time he used the rather pejorative term for Walter’s new butler, Veronika.  She didn’t seem to mind correcting her Vargr companion, knowing that the captain was doing it as part of an in-joke (that wasn’t very funny) and partly to exert his authority (which was likely only show given the character of this crew).  She’d continue to correct him, as long as he used the term ‘sex doll’.

Honestly, from what she could divine, Veronika now had a more extensive legal database in her than anyone else on-board, including their mainframe.  She’d remind Vonon later, perhaps through Veronika, of that fact; charismatic or not, the Vargr might have to answer to libel charges at some point.  From the head of corporation that Vonon had sunk all his money into.  Despite his delusions of grandeur, he wasn’t the majority stakeholder.  And generally Vo’s antics were pretty funny.  Generally.

“Two point eight five light seconds out from Port Authority.” the Longshot’s astrogator noted dutifully when the questioning of a text came up.  Invermory wasn’t that large a world; still, she’d calculated a solution that erred on the side of safety and placed them on the outer limit of the standard 100 diameters.  Possibly why they’d hit the body, less chance of discovery theoretically.  In any case, the chances seemed, well, astronomically small.

Yet, here they were.  And as with any collision, the transponders (all six of them, that they knew of) would have the telemetry stored,  Surely, they weren’t going to attempt to doctor any of those.

Sharik remained on station.  She’d love to take a closer look at the body once it was on board, but that wasn’t her call at this point.  The diminutive ex-operative continued to plot solutions to the Invermory port as they would have to go there eventually.  Depending on how much time, they wanted to take it could be as little as four hours or so, or as much as four days if they really wanted to take the time.  The latter would require some explanation though...

In reply to Sharik Kaagira (msg # 62):







     Vonon's eyes go wide at hearing this, his ears flatten down against his skull, and his lips peel back, exposing his teeth and fangs...then he suddenly doubles over, once again howling with laughter.

     "You sent--harr-harr--you sent it--hurr-hurr-hurr--you sent the text down--harr-harr--down to the planet?"  Vonon gasps out, between laughs, "We're screwed!  Hurr-hurr-hurr!  You probably--harr-harr--probably crashed their--hurr-hurr--their transponder response servers!  Harr-harr-harr!"



     "Oh, come on!  This situation is funny!" Vonon growls, as he straightens up and turns to face Khea--or, tries to growl, since he's still laughing.

     "You Aslan have no sense of--hurr-hurr-- Absurd Humor!  And Humans aren't born with--harr-harr--distinct Pack or Clan Markings!  The closest they have are--hurr--vague differences in skin coloration they call--harr-harr--Ethnic Variation, whatever the frack that means."

     Vonon reaches up with both hands and scrubs at his ears until they stand back up, then he shakes his whole body--starting from the top of his head and moving down to the tip of his tail--finishing by stamping both booted feet upon the decking.

     "Harrem!  Ha." Vonon clears his throat, as he adjusts the set of his candy-apple red ascot against his electric-neon sky blue silk shirt.

     Now fully back in control of himself--and no longer laughing--Vonon casts a side-ways glance towards Sharik.

     "Sensor Officer Sharik, would you please repeat for the Chief Engineer your report of the detailed scan you did of the immediate area of space around the ship, when that body hit us."

     "Meanwhile, I shall apologize to Comm Officer Inderpal, and explain that I was not, just now, laughing at her, but I was laughing at the ridiculousness of this situation--and how she's made it even funnier."

     With a canine grin, Vonon walks over and leans his left hip against the comms station and crosses his arms across his chest.

     "Indy, I apologize if, at any time, you thought I might be either angry at you, or that I was ridiculing you.  I was not.  It's just that, quite by accident, you took the correct actions the incorrect way.  And I find the possible results very funny."

     "Yes, in a perfect universe, that body would hit us, we'd report it immediately to the proper authorities, they'd come over here really fast, quickly take our statements, maybe copy some computer logs, grab the corpse, give us their thanks, and we'd be on our way--just like that.  Unfortunately, that's not the way the universe works!  Trust me, at one time in my life I was one of those 'proper authorities'."

     "The moment they heard the words 'dead body' they would have gone into 'official investigation mode' and immediately stopped listening to anything we had to say.  They would have demanded that we cease all activities, cease all communications, don't touch the body, and do nothing until a boatload of investigators could get over to our ship.  At that point the investigators--still not listening to anything we might try to tell them!--would impound our ship as a 'crime scene' for the duration of their investigation, which would last as long as they felt it needed to, and they would refuse to tell us just how long that would be."

     "Those investigators would poke, peek, and peer into everything--with no respect for personal privacy--looking for any evidence that might prove we had something to do with how a dead body got onto our ship--oh, they would interrogate us, and listen to our story, but they are trained to disbelieve anything they are told by a suspect.  And that's exactly what we would be, too--suspects.  Until they were satisfied that they were never going to be able to tie us to that body, they would continue holding our ship and suspecting us of being its killers."

     "I know this, Indy, because that was the procedure when I was a Space Patrolman--and the level of Law Enforcement at Cassandra's Belt is only slightly less than here at Invermory!"

     "That's why I want to wait until we're docked to report the dead body--hopefully at the Downport, on the planet--but I'm not going to hold my breath for that.  I'm hoping we can, at least, dock at the Highport."

     "Now, what's so funny about you sending a text message down to the planet is that, since we just came out of Jump, and technically we're sill at the edge of the planet's Jump Shadow, we are subject to the authority of what a lot of places call Orbital Traffic Control, or sometimes just Orbit Control.  Orbit Control monitors and controls all spaceship traffic in the area of space around a planet--from the edge of the 100-Diameter Jump Shadow, all the way in to the upper edge of the planet's atmosphere.  If we are to dock at any space stations or other orbital facilities--or even meet up with another ship or just sit in a parking orbit--it's Orbit Control that handles us."

     "Now, if we're going down to the planet's surface, then at the edge of the atmosphere, Orbit Control will hand us off to Planetary Air Traffic Control.  Air Traffic will get us to where ever we want or need to go, on the planet."

     "But the thing is, Indy, that for both groups, Controllers and Ships are required to talk to each other.  Talk.  In a common language if possible, or in a language that can be run through a translator if necessary, but verbal communication is legally required.  Or visual, if you're one of those squibs from the other side of the Imperium, to trailing--uh, Hivers, I think they are."

     "So, when you sent a text down to Air Traffic Control, well, we weren't even on their radar--literally--so they would have looked at that text message as nothing but a data packet, probably sent by our transponder--an astrogational update, or something.  Their computers would have passed it on to other computers to be decrypted--which, as a text message, it wouldn't be--so then it would either be ignored as a 'corrupted' file, or it would be sent off for review by a sophont overseer.  Who will get to it, eventually.  Maybe."

     Vonon uncrosses his arms and stands up from leaning against the comms station,

     "How complicated and 'intrusive' everything I've just said actually is depends upon the specific circumstances at the specific planet.  Some planets will next to nothing for Orbit Control, but really decent Air Traffic Control, others will have next to nothing everywhere.  Tech Level plays a part, too."

     "Now, here at Invermory..." Vonon again gives the rather feral-looking grin that Vargr have, "It is safe to say that here at Planet Invermory, the people are so friendly that Full Body Cavity Searches are just how they say 'hello'."

     Though still grinning, after a tiny pause, Vonon adds, "Please note, I am not laughing."

Horatio has a bit of difficulty maneuvering the drones by himself, but just as they near the body, he notices the subroutines menu. One of them is Special Handling, which he quickly discovers involves handling and moving fragile items. There's nothing specific about handling a frozen body but it does cover handling frozen materials.

If he activates it, the drones should be able to move the body into the hold without doing any damage to it.


In zero gravity, the dorsal cargo bay doors of the Secondary Cargo Bay can open without dumping any cargo out, especially since the cargo is all strapped in.

In short order, the body is brought in, the cargo bay doors are closed, air is restored, and Veronika brings the grav stretcher in. The body is then placed on the stretcher and the Reese and Veronika float it down to the lift, and then up to the Medical Bay on the main deck.

With the body brought in, Sir Walter joined the entourage as they made their way to the medbay. "Veronika, what can you tell us concerning bodies found in space and their recovery? The way he is clutching the book and his smile, I would hazard to guess that it was his last act of defiance, making it a suicide." he asked

Sam waits at the medical bay with Reese. AS they wait she says to him "Do you mind if I examine the body before you start the autopsy? There may be clues on it which an autopsy would destroy or damage."

Obviously not feeling as amused by the situation as Vonon is Khea angrily walks over to him and stretches her legs to make the size difference between them even more obvious.
"Markings? What do you think I am? Some sort of animal? she shouts while baring her teeth, oblivious to the irony of this gesture.
Clothes and badges is what indicates ones affiliation. And based on the ridiculous things I have seen some humans and vargr wear its the same for you people. So has did this corpse have any recognizable affiliation or not?